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Tesla shows what its self-driving cars see while on the road

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A whirlwind of colors

by Andrew Liptak

In October, Tesla announced that all of its new cars would be outfitted with equipment that would allow them to drive on their own, and released a video showing off technology. Now, the company has released some additional footage, showing what the car itself sees as it drives without human input.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted the demonstration, which shows off a passenger sitting in the driver’s seat (who was required to be there by law) as the car navigated to its destination traffic, stop lights, and other road conditions before it parks itself. In addition to the view from the car’s interior, the video shows off what the car’s left rear, medium range, and right rear cameras are seeing.

A whirlwind of colors reveal just what the car is ‘seeing’: lane lines and motion, as well as colored boxes for "in path objects" such as road lights, objects and roadsigns. These boxes highlight people, other vehicles and other potential hazards that a human driver would ordinarily take into consideration while driving.

According to the company, the new cars will be fitted with an onboard computer with "40 times the computing power of the previous generation" to process the vision, sonar, and radar imagery the vehicle takes in.

As a bonus, Musk showed off a shorter version, set to Benny Hill:

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